Games News! 21/09/15

my fingers hurt from counting to 5 so many times
Adventskalender

Quinns: Haikus! Like poems that went through a trash compactor. I think they’re awesome, and have decided to write this week’s Games News entirely in haiku form.

If you think you can do better than any of these, pop your entry in the comments! I’ll pick a winner to go beside my own poems and inevitably outshine them.

Stronghold’s back again
A game of deadly sieges
Enduring the years

Read More
Leave a comment

On Playmats: A Netrunner Story

oranges, forgetfulness, under my breath, slipping hearts
On Playmats: A Netrunner Story

Leigh & Quinns collaborated on Life Hacks last year, a very personal article about learning to play Netrunner. They return for this article about the 2015 UK Netrunner Nationals.

Quinns: I am slumped on the floor of the Birmingham Hilton. My head almost between my knees, I break into an orange by pressing my fingers into it until the skin splits. I begin eating. The flesh is both dry and watery in my mouth.

“I don’t know if I’ll make it,” I tell Leigh. Then a pause, weighing my next words with the pulp in my mouth. “And I don’t know if I want to play.”

Read More
Leave a comment

Podcast #33: Paints, Knocks and Christian Petersen

did we mention Quinns came 7th in the UK netrunner nationals yet

Market research tells us that the median SU&SD reader is, at a given moment, most likely to be thatching their mead hall. How boring! You’d best pop our 33rd ever podcast on in the background.

Matt and Quinns are desperate to talk about their crippling Infinity habit, while Paul’s been playing the beloved game of Battlecon. We’ve got a quick interview with Fantasy Flight CEO Christian Petersen where he answers such lovely questions as “What happens to board games that don’t sell” and “What is the most stressful thing about your job”. And we receive an email from Brooklyn-based SU&SD fan Nate Kushner titled The Sad Room.

The fun never stops! The thatching shouldn’t either, though. Chop chop.

Read More
Leave a comment

Games News! 14/09/15

whisked away, friend-feasting, beating them until they're bulbous
Private Die

Paul: Good morning, Quinns!

Quinns: Good morning, Paul!

Paul: You know what, I think it’s going to be an exciting Games News this week! Let’s get right into the Games News Forecast, beginning with a look at the satellite picture that shows a heavy cloud of zombies coming in from the north.

Quinns: That sounds like one of the all-time bad weeks.

Paul: Don’t worry! It’s just the forthcoming single-player campaign for Zombie 15’. If our review of that one slipped you by, you should know that we recorded it in a single 15 minute take.

Read More
158 Comments

Introducing… Cool Ghosts!

cool ghosts, sleepy ferrets, absent friends, binary boogie boards
Introducing... Cool Ghosts!

Quinns: HELLO everybody! No video this week as Paul’s on holiday and I’m working on something that I want to get just right, but we’ve still got something for your weekend.

Cool Ghosts is a new project from Matt Lees and I that’s kind of “Shut Up & Sit Down, for video games”. Don’t worry about either of us taking time away from SU&SD, though! Matt’s working on Cool Ghosts instead of his prior YouTube channel, and I’m just swapping it in for my old video game freelance work.

Good places to jump in would be my roundup of new releases on Steam, Matt revealing the new Hyper Realistic Turbo 3D Edition of The Witcher 3, of both of us bickering like a married couple as we play Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime.

You’ll find a load of familiar faces from the SU&SD comments making themselves at home, too. Do go check it out! Unless you hate video games, in which case here’s a video of a sleepy ferret.

Read More
40 Comments

Review: Traders of Osaka

greasy squids, spider maths, black tides, pretty boats
Review: Traders of Osaka

Quinns: Today we finish our review triplet of games set in Japan!

First we had the beautiful, and beautifully clean design of Samurai. Next was the grand old game of Shogun, which was no less impressive. Today we look at Traders of Osaka, a small box game that was actually designed in Japan by one Susumu Kawasaki. And today I want to talk about yet another kind of beauty.

I don’t say this enough, but one of my favourite things about board games is that each one feels like receiving a shrink-wrapped idea, direct from the designer. I’ve called board games a “lossless” format before, meaning that unlike trying to write a novel or make a videogame, in the creative process of making a board game you can directly transmute the thing you have in your head into a real, physical box. It’s because of this that even bad board games (no- especially bad board games) have something intensely personal about them.

The difficulty with designing board games is, of course, making sure they arrive in one piece at their destination. That players can unpack them, study the documentation, and enjoy themselves as you intended.

So it’s fitting that Traders of Osaka is a game about shipping handicrafts across treacherous waters. As you hold this box, you’re holding Susumu Kawasaki’s beloved idea, designed in Japan, manufactured in China, handed to you by some dutiful postman. Did it get here in one piece?

Read More
61 Comments

Games News! 07/09/15

the force awakens, the advertising also awakens, the disease awakens too
Antarctica

Quinns: We’ve got a very special Games News for you today. Paul is quite literally in the Yukon, but coming to us live from a satellite phone!

Can you hear us, Paul?

Paul: Quinns? This isn’t a great time. I’m up a tree at 63.9946° N, 135.4902° W. There’s a bear after me, or I THINK it’s a bear–

Quinns: Paul, the first images have come through for Pandemic Legacy!

Paul: Seriously?

Quinns: Yes! There’s a whole video trailer.

Read More
Leave a comment

SU&SD Play… Two Rooms and a Boom

quinns goes full stasi, pip goes tiny terrorist, nobody wins
SU&SD Play... Two Rooms and a Boom

Oh no. Just as our Let’s Play of Resistance: Avalon forever branded Matt as a sneaky bastard, so this Let’s Play of Two Rooms and a Boom is going to designate Quinns as a ruthless brute. If we keep this up no member of SU&SD will be respectable.

If you’re not sure how to play Two Rooms and a Boom, definitely go check out the publisher’s fantastic, tiny teaching video right here. Or just jump straight in like some kind of mad video-ferret! It’s up to you.

Huge thanks to Two Rooms designer Alan Gerding for running this game for us, to Two Rooms designer Sean McCoy for helping to film, and to all you lovely SU&SD party attendees for playing!

Read More
Leave a comment

Podcast #32: Gas, Quiche and King Eric Lang

basically eric thinks he is is a modern Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

My god! 32 podcasts in and we’re finally approaching “professional”.

Paul, Matt and Quinns discuss the bold new Game of Thrones card game and think back on classic lie-athon Battlestar Galactica, before clearing the floor for an interview with veteran designer Eric Lang (Quarriors, XCOM: The Board Game, Chaos in the Old World). We close with a quick trip to the SU&SD mailbag and an impromptu game show(!).

We’ve done it, ladies and gents. It’s all downhill from here.

Read More
Leave a comment

Games News! 31/08/15

hoosier hospitality, ima your hospitality, hoosier drone warfare, ima your drone wa
Indianapolis

Quinns: Morning, Paul! You ready for some Games News?

Paul: …

Quinns: See that image up top? It’s the first photo we have of The Prodigals Club (previously The Castaways Club), Czech Games’ pseudo-sequel to the wonderful Last Will. We now know that The Prodigals Club will once again see players racing to lose their vast Victorian fortunes, but this time simply because they think that poor people have more fun. Presumably they saw Titanic (the film) but are living in the decade before Titanic (the accident).

But here’s the really cool bit- The Prodigals Club will ship with three modules, which are “trying to lose an election”, “trying to get rid of all your possessions”, and “trying to offend the most influential people in high society”. You can play with any two modules or even all three, but the game will also allow you to bolt your copy of Last Will onto Prodigals Club to replace any one of the three modules. Isn’t that crazy?!

Paul: …

Quinns: I KNOW!

Read More
50 Comments